By Tiamiyu Prudence Arobani
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says it is rallying behind a new campaign by Mission 89 to address the growing use of sport as a cover for child trafficking.
IOM joined Mission 89 to launch ‘The Line We Don’t Cross’, a global campaign to end child exploitation in sport and protect young athletes’ dreams from abuse.
IOM Deputy Director General for Operations, Ugochi Daniels, said “no child should be trafficked under the guise of sport”.
Mission 89, a research and advocacy organisation fighting the exploitation of young athletes.
The mission is exposing how traffickers increasingly exploit sport to target children, weaponising dreams of athletic success into channels for abuse and exploitation.
“Sport should be a source of joy and achievement, not a gateway to exploitation,” Daniels said.
“Yet traffickers pray on the ambitions of young athletes, using false promises to lure them into abuse and deception.
“Through this campaign, we aim to strengthen protection measures, integrate safeguards into recruitment systems, and ensure that children are safe on and off the field.”
The new campaign works to counter a darker side of the multi-billion dollar industry, by ending child trafficking through sports.
The campaign will draw attention to the structural vulnerabilities in the sports industry, which is valued between 471 billion and 1.4 trillion dollars.
Founder and Executive Director of Mission 89, Lerina Bright, said unethical recruitment practices and inadequate safeguarding systems often create opportunities for human traffickers to operate, particularly targeting children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“While we continue to celebrate the power of sport, we cannot ignore the risks faced by young athletes,” Bright said.
“This campaign is about ensuring that every child who dreams through sport is safe, supported, and never exploited.”
Of the approximately 50 million people worldwide who are subjected to trafficking-related abuses, 38 per cent of them are children.
Similarly, of these children victims, 11 per cent are trafficked through false promises.
In the sports industry, these false promises take many forms, including joining fake sports academies or signing what appear to be professional contracts.
For many young people, sport can be a pathway out of disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly when playing in international professional leagues.
However, these dreams and their disadvantaged backgrounds can also make them uniquely vulnerable to the false promises of traffickers, according to the campaign.
Working alongside Mission 89, IOM is calling upon stakeholders within the sports industry to strengthen protection mechanisms.
This includes reforming unethical recruitment strategies which can be exploited by traffickers and providing education to the entire industry about the harms and risks of trafficking.
In addition to these tangible changes, the campaign is also calling on industry leaders to sign commitments which declare zero tolerance of the scourge.
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